The present invention relates generally to handwritten note taking and, more particularly, to a method and system for enabling handwritten note taking and retrieval.
Note taking is practised by an enormous number of individuals, in the personal, educational, and professional spheres. Individuals keep personal diaries to record events in their lives. Students take notes in classrooms and lecture halls which they later may amend and review in preparation for examination on that subject matter. Executive workers take notes in meetings to record action events and prepare to-do lists. Scientists write notes in laboratory notebooks to record experimental methods and results.
Despite the availability of portable computers, the majority of people still use paper notebooks. The free-form input allowed by paper notebooks, along with their general versatility and simplicity, means that they remain a preferred option. However, the information contained in a paper notebook is of course not integrated with digital data and is therefore very inflexible to subsequently use. In particular, it is very difficult to find specific information in such notebooks, as they must be searched manually. Further, there is no means of automatically recording when an entry was made, known as xe2x80x98timestampingxe2x80x99 of an entry.
Computer systems allowing the real-time capture, the storage and the retrieval of manuscript notes are already known. Such systems allow users to xe2x80x98writexe2x80x99 on a notepad computer, the computer capturing and recording the information and using character recognition algorithms if appropriate to convert the handwritten text to electronic text. If required, each input stroke may be timestamped, in order to log that particular input and to aid retrieval. However, such systems have not generally enjoyed widespread use, at least partly because note takers still prefer the simplicity and flexibility of paper notebooks.
The present invention has as its object to address the need for a more functional note taking method and system than hitherto provided by conventional paper notebooks, whilst avoiding the drawbacks inherent in the known or contemplated electronic notebook approaches.
It is an objective of the present invention to provide a new system and method for enabling handwritten note taking and retrieval.
The present invention provides, in a first aspect, a method of enabling handwritten note taking and retrieval, the method including the steps of:
providing a user with at least one form printable on a surface, the form containing information relating to a notebook activity and including coded data indicative of an identity of the form and of at least one reference point of the form;
receiving, in a computer system, indicating data from a sensing device operated by said user, said indicating data regarding the identity of the form and a position of the sensing device relative to the form, the sensing device, when placed in an operative position relative to the form, sensing the indicating data using at least some of the coded data; and
identifying in the computer system and from the indicating data, at least one parameter relating to the notebook activity.
In a second aspect, the invention provides a method of enabling handwritten note taking and retrieval, the method including the steps of:
providing a user with at least one form printable on a surface, said form containing information relating to a notebook activity and including coded data indicative of at least one parameter of the notebook activity;
receiving, in a computer system, data from a sensing device operated by said user regarding said at least one parameter and regarding movement of the sensing device relative to said form, the sensing device, when moved relative to said form, sensing the data regarding said at least one parameter using at least some of the coded data and generating the data regarding its own movement relative to said form; and
interpreting, in the computer system, said movement of the sensing device as it relates to said at least one parameter.
In a third aspect, the invention provides a method of enabling handwritten note taking and retrieval, the method including the steps of:
providing a notebook user with a form including coded data indicative of an identity of said form;
receiving, in a computer system, data from a sensing device regarding an identity of the user and regarding the identity of said form, the sensing device containing the data regarding the identity of the user and sensing the data regarding the identity of said form using at least some of the coded data; and
identifying, in the computer system and from the data regarding the identity of the user and the identity of the form, a notebook activity.
According to a fourth aspect of the invention, there is provided a system for enabling handwritten note taking and retrieval, the system including:
at least one form printable on a surface, said form containing information relating to a notebook activity and including coded data indicative of an identity of said form and of at least one reference point of said form; and
a computer system for receiving indicating data from a sensing device operated by a user involved in the notebook activity; said indicating data regarding the identity of said form and a position of the sensing device relative to said form, the sensing device, when placed in an operative position relative to said form, sensing the indicating data using at least some of the coded data, said computer system including means for identifying, from the indicating data, at least one parameter relating to the notebook activity.
In a fifth aspect, the invention provides a system for enabling handwritten note taking and retrieval, the system including:
at least one form printable on an interactive surface, said form containing information relating to a notebook activity and including coded data indicative of at least one parameter of the notebook activity; and
a computer system for receiving data from a sensing device operated by the notebook user, said data regarding movement of the sensing device relative to said form, and for interpreting said movement of the sensing device as it relates to said at least one parameter, the sensing device, when moved relative to said form, sensing the data regarding said at least one parameter using at least some of the coded data, and generating the data regarding its own movement relative to said form.
In a sixth aspect, the invention provides a system for enabling handwritten note taking and retrieval, the system including:
a form including coded data indicative of an identity of the form; and
a computer system for receiving from a sensing device data regarding an identity of a notebook user and the identity of said form, and for identifying, from said received data, a notebook activity, the sensing device containing the data regarding the identity of the user and sensing the data regarding the identity of the form using at least some of the coded data.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a system and a method which utilizes one or more forms capable of interacting with a computer system. Whilst the novel method and system of the present invention may be used in conjunction with a single computer system, in a particularly preferred form it is designed to operate over a computer network, such as the Internet.
As a physical entity, the interactive form is constructed as a surface medium and may be of any suitable structure. However, in a preferred arrangement, the form comprises sheet material such as paper or the like which has the coded data printed on it and which allows it to interact with the computer system. The coded data is detectable preferably, but not exclusively, outside the visible spectrum, thereby enabling it to be machine-readable but substantially invisible to the human eye. The form may also include visible material which provides information to a user, such as the application or purpose of the form, and which visible information may be registered or correlate in position with the relevant hidden coded data.
The system also includes a sensing device to convey data from the form to the computer system, and in some instances, to contribute additional data. Again, the sensing device may take a variety of forms but is preferably compact and easily portable. In a particularly preferred arrangement, the sensing device is configured as a pen which is designed to be able to physically mark the interactive form as well as to selectively enable the coded data from the form to be read and transmitted to the computer system. The coded data then provides control information, configured such that designation thereof by a user causes instructions to be applied to the software running on the computer system or network.
The nature of the interaction between the form and the sensing device and the data that each contributes to the computer system may vary. In one arrangement, the coded data on the form is indicative of the identity of the form and of at least one reference point on that form. In another embodiment, the interactive form includes coded data which is indicative of a parameter of the form, whereas the sensing device is operative to provide data regarding its own movement relative to that form to the computer system together with coded data from the form. In yet another arrangement, the form includes the coded data which at least identifies the form, and the sensing device is designed to provide, to the computer system, data based on the form coded data, and also on data which identifies the user of the device.
In a preferred arrangement, the system and method also employs specially designed printers to print the interactive form. Further these printers constitute or form part of the computer system and are designed to receive data from the sensing device. As indicated above, the system and method of the invention is ideally suited to operate over a network. In this arrangement, the printers are fully integrated into the network and allow for printing of the interactive forms on demand and also for distributing of the forms using a mixture of multi-cast and point-cast communication protocols.
Accordingly, in a preferred form, the present invention provides methods and systems which use a paper and pen based interface for a computer system. This provides many significant benefits over traditional computer systems. The advantage of paper is that it is widely used to display and record information. Further, printed information is easier to read than information displayed on a computer screen. Moreover, paper does not run on batteries, can be read in bright light, or robustly accepts coffee spills or the like and is portable and disposable. Furthermore, the system allows for hand-drawing and hand-writing to be captured which affords greater richness of expression than input via a computer keyboard and mouse.
The present invention therefore provides a system and method for enabling handwritten note taking and retrieval making use of novel interactive surface media.
The interactive surface media provides the facility for handwritten note taking in a novel form of notebook, which can be used to capture handwritten notes in a persistent manner. The notes may be signed by a third party to provide proof of recordal, for example with respect to a laboratory notebook requiring corroboration of experimental technique or results, which may at a later date be needed to establish priority date with respect to a patent application. As the system of the invention allows the input to a notebook to be linked to a particular page instance, a page can contain notes captured at different times. Subsequently, if a notebook page is printed, it will contain a facsimile of all the notes on that page, whenever they may have been captured. Additionally, a user can selectively retrieve information regarding the timestamping of the different entries on that page, or can retrieve a version of the page as recorded at a particular moment in time (i.e. before later additions to that page were made).
The handwriting can be recognized and converted to text for indexing purposes so that the notes can be searched by keyword. The notebook also supports searching without text conversion, thus allowing the user to search on graphical information.
The notebooks or notebook pages may be pre-printed or printed on demand.